“So you staying with me, staying with your fated mate hinges on that stupid wrestling show?” he asked, his voice cold with derision as he struggled to hang on to his wolf. “You don’t want to play the part of my wife on the campaign trail. But you're good with sexy warrior princess in a bikini—”
“It’s about choice, Rafesson!” she shot back. “Myrna warrior princess is someone I chose to play, someone I want to pretend to be, because save for her backstory she is much like me. I am not a perfect first lady, and do not pretend that you would only require me to play this part for your election. Afterwards you would require me to remain the same. Someone opposite of myself with all the qualities I do not naturally possess--isn’t that what you told me was required of a she-wolf deserving to stand by your side.”
Yes, yes, that had been what he said. And technically, she was right. He liked Viking Myrna…in fact, he loved her. But no, she wasn’t fit for public consumption, not if he hoped to win. Viking Myrna had made him a laughing stock. If people saw the wrestling footage, they’d laugh even harder.
“I have thought about this long and hard,” Myrna said as if reading his mind. “I will not sell my soul for a man. Not any longer. But if I stay away, claiming a need for rest, you can still win your election. We are not married, so we owe each other naught. And as for our bairn, I am told there is a written contract called a custody agreement—”
At those two words, his wolf didn’t just rear, it roared inside of him with fury and denial. “No, Myrna! Enough of this. I am coming to North Dakota. You will return with me to The Wolf House either on your own two feet or I’ll drag you with me. We’ll talk here as long as it takes. But you staying on in North Dakota isn’t an option. Nothing involving the words ‘custody agreement’ is an option.”
“Oh, Rafes,” Myrna said, her face suddenly collapsing into sadness. “This is what they told me you would say.”
Rafes frowned. “Who is they?”
“Knud, Ola, my brothers. They are all here with me,” she informed him, shaking her head sorrowfully. “My brothers said you wouldn’t let me go, and Ola said you were not capable of not getting your way. Knud said you would threaten me. And I…” She shook her head sadly. “I was instructed to turn the rings I was given over to them as soon as you did.”
“Myrna…” he started, already realizing his mistake. He should have kept her talking before invoking a power position. Explained the situation over and over again until she saw reason. But it was hard to think three moves ahead with his wolf barking inside of him. “Myrna wait.”
But Myrna didn’t wait. The screen between his fingers went black and when it blinked in again, Ola’s face appeared. Not his fated mate’s.
“So…that happened,” Ola said, with a pitying shake of her head.
He glared at the screen. “Ola, do not test me when it comes to my mate. I don’t care how worthy you think your cause is. If you try to drag her into that ground zero mess you call a life, by turning her against me—”
Ola lost the pitying look with an aggrieved sigh. “Okay, well, I was going to try to do this sympathetic and shit. But I guess I’m just going have to do me now.” Fixing her face into a frank look, she announced, “Myrna’s filed for custodial sanctuary.”
Custodial sanctuary? Rafes blinked, because Ola was joking. She had to be. “How would she have even found out about custodial sanctuary?”
“I told her,” Ola answered with a shrug, as if her interference in his mateship was totally NBD. No big deal at all. “Knud happened to be paying us a visit to consult on a little dragon probs we’re having after our trip abroad when your freshly minted mate called him, having finally come to realize that oh yeah, you’re an irredeemable asshole, exactly like everyone, including your own mama’s been telling her. And my dads were here, too, so you know they were pissed—that protective brother stuff is back on like those couple decades didn’t even happen, Tron. And I was like, men, men, calm down. Don’t get mad, get LEGAL. So we droned her out here to North Dakota—way easy to sneak her on out by the way because your head, like, lives up your ass. Then when she got here, I let her know ALL the legal ways she didn’t have to put up with your shit. And by the way, I was wrong back in Spring. You totally don’t have to worry about Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year, because you’re definitely not invited.”
Cold fury washed over Rafes in waves.
Because the thing was Custodial Sanctuary was his fucking mandate. Passed as part of a suite of long overdue anti-harassment laws during his first one-hundred days as president.
Thanks to heat control and the heat shot, “surprise” first pregnancies had almost become a thing of a past for wolves over the age of eighteen—at least in the states where heat control was allowed. But in the states where heat control was restricted, she-wolves often made poor choices in mates in the throes of their body’s demand to be bred. Unfortunately, male wolves by their very nature were hard to separate from she-wolf they’d impregnated. Stalking claims went up by a thousand percent in the states where heat control was banned, and she-wolfs were often forced to take out restraining orders against their unintended mates.
For that reason, he’d convinced the Lupine Council to pass a federal mandate that any pregnant she-wolf who didn’t wish to marry or stay with the father of her unborn child could seek sanctuary with another state’s kingdom pack until the child was born and custody was arranged.
That was the official version of the law anyway. But the public perception of the mandate had become a lot less graceful, since it passed. It was often called Mangeneck Stalk Away in the media, and it was considered the equivalent of telling the world your mate was a lowbred rabid psycho. And if word got out that Myrna had filed one against him, the mandate’s creator…
“You’re using Myrna to kill my campaign.”
“Okay, catch up, cuz. That anti-black gate stuff has been backburnered so hard, now that Fensa’s got this dragon up her ass. I don’t care about your campaign one way or the other. But I guess Aunt Myrna does, because she’s stupid stubborn when it comes to you. She said we weren’t allowed to officially to announce her filing for custodial sanctuary…unless of course, you try to drag her back to The Wolf House against her will—like, you know you just threatened to do.” Ola shook her head at him on the screen. "She’s not looking to hurt you, cuz, just get the hell away from you.”
At those words, the gravity of the situation began to truly sink in. Ola and Knud had played this perfectly. Leaving him with no choice but to either let Myrna go and enter into a custody settlement after the election or basically kill any chance he had of getting re-elected in his attempt to get her back.
“Give her back the rings,” Rafes insisted. “Let me talk to her.”
“For the president who spearheaded this law, you don’t seem to have a great understanding of what Custodial Sanctuary means. So let me just catch you up right now. She’s filed for sanctuary against you. That means I don’t have to give her my rings. Don’t have to let you talk to her. And if you’re thinking of paying an unofficial visit in that drone of yours, just know, though Myrna wants this done quiet, I will officially file a no-fly order on you right before the biggest vote of your life—you know on behalf of my uncles.”
Rafes looked at her, never as close to ordering the murder of someone of the opposite sex as he was now. But she was right. As much as he’d like to storm into North Dakota and get his she-wolf back, all military drones ablaze, Ola was two parts “fuck you” and 100% witch. He had no doubt she would follow through on her threat. Lose him the election, just to prove he wasn’t the boss of her.
He gritted his teeth. “Okay then, can you at least relay a message?”
Ola let out a bored sigh. “Let me guess, you want me to Rafessplain to her how you’re the president of North America. Tell her all that matters is this election and how you feel and that’s why she has no choice but to keep on playing this bullshit First She-Wolf role you forced on
her until you’re out of office, since she’s just your fated mate and how she feels about any of it doesn’t count, since it can’t be tallied like a vote.”
Her words chilled him, because that, in essence was what he’d been about to say. He tried again. “I understand she’s upset, but…”
Ola sucked on her teeth, cutting him off. “Yeah, Rafes that ‘but’ is the main problem here. You don’t seem capable of understanding when you’re being an ass, and I’m not, like, the most emotionally sensitive she-wolf on the planet, but I’m getting the feeling she’s sick of putting up with your bullshit. Now, if you don’t mind, I paused a season 100 retrospective of Rap Stars Wives to help your ex make this call, so I’ll be getting back to my much more important business now.”
The “if you don’t mind” must have been entirely sarcastic, because Ola’s screen blinked out in the next moment without giving Rafes any chance to protest.
Leaving Rafes to fall, mute, into his seat for the first time that day. No…night now. According to his internal time clock, it was after eight p.m. Twelve hours. Just a mere twelve hours after the happiest three days of his life,
Myrna had left him. His she-wolf was gone—
Before he could fully process that thought, the wolf rose to the surface. Hot with rage, threatening to take over.
And Rafes had to clamp down on the beast, bury all his emotion about what had just happened underneath a stone.
Because after three days of pure peace. His feral beast was back. Even worse than before.
34
Max
“Maxie…Maxie…are you awake behind those sunnies?” a teasing voice asked.
Maxwell Kreft startled out of his daze to see his girlfriend, Dyana standing in front of his poolside lounge chair in a bikini and a pair of oversized sunnies of her own. She had a fruity drink in each hand, and was framed by sunshine and palm trees, the kind of which you could only see in VR simulations back in London.
But this wasn’t London.
“Sorry,” he said, talking the drink from her.
And he admired her perfectly tanned skin as she settled into the lounge chair beside him. That’s how you could tell the poor tourists from the ones with money at this posh Ibiza resort. Pale Englishmen like him still had to depend on the sun to tan their skin. But thanks to biweekly dermatologists appointments, Dyana stayed the perfect shade of unblemished brown, no matter how little sun she’d seen during the last year at Oxford. And now she looked like a #richkidsofoxford vacation photo as she sucked in sun she didn’t need.
Technically, that was because, his girlfriend was one of those hashtags. Rich from birth without a money or a dermatological problem in the world. But she claimed not to care that Maxwell had gotten into Oxford purely on merit, and had only attended Abernathy boarding school before that, thanks to an ongoing scholarship some mysterious billionaire had allotted to the oldest descendants of the Kreft family, like, a million years ago.
“You might not be any hashtags, but you’re a right laugh, and I promise I won’t report you if you go in for a snog,” she’d told him during the meet and greet mixer for their Oxford MBA program.
She’d taken him back to her posh flat after just one kiss. He’d thought at the time that maybe she’d been on too many energy pills. He’d heard a lot of the business school students depended on them to get through the year, and the false adrenaline highs, often led to questionable bedding decisions. But she hadn’t seemed to regret it the day after. And while most of the other students had fallen in and out of flings like mayflies throughout their MBA year, he and Dyana had been relationship status ever since.
Which was probably why she read him so easily when he stared down at the Margahito she’d brought him instead of taking a drink. “If you stop thinking about your mum for a bit, we’d probably have a lot more fun on our Ibiza trip.”
“Sorry,” Max said, looking over at her with an apologetic smile. “I just…I still can’t figure why she responded the way she did to me taking this trip instead of coming home for a visit. I wouldn’t have thought she’d mind so much.”
According to all his mother’s social media, she used to be a happy and delightful person. His grandparents had once even described her as a sensitive soul, who’d been kind to everyone she’d met. But Max had never known that woman who posted happy pictures of her family on Facebook and Instagram and who’d started a blog to painstakingly craft every moment of her wedding to a man she’d said was “the most loving surprise of her life” and “proof that God truly did exist.” At least that was what she’d claimed then. That blog had since been taken down and Maxwell’s old Computer Science flat mate had to root around for hours just to find it.
Maxwell had been surprised about the existence of the blog, but not that she’d taken it down. That woman who’d married his father had died for all intents and purposes just a few days after Maxwell was born. His oldest sister spoke of those days before their father left fondly, claiming that Fiona and Colby had been a lovely couple, always laughing, always swinging her around and having fun. But Maxwell had only known a bitter wraith of a woman, who’d seemed to despise him more every day.
“You’ve become the mirror image of your father,” she’d told during his last holiday visit. “Same kind eyes. Same smile even…”
The words had been spoken softly, but they weren’t a compliment. And for the rest of the holiday, he’d often felt his mother’s acid stare on his back. Like he wasn’t her son. More an unwelcome ghost she’d had no choice but to let into her house.”
That more than anything was why he’d agreed to take off to Ibiza for a few months with Dyana rather than return straight home after his graduation. He dreaded the thought of spending the entire summer until he started his job at the London branch of Rustanov Enterprises in the little coastal town where he grew up with that bitter stare burning into his back. And he’d thought she’d be happy to be shot of him for the entire holiday when he called to ask for money to take the trip as a graduation gift.
He knew she had the funds. His father had put her on his account when they married, and according to his oldest sister, money was still being deposited into that account like clockwork every month. Which was why his mother had never gotten round to getting a divorce on the grounds of desertion, even though technically, she hadn’t spoken or heard from Colby Kreft in over 23 years.
However, Fiona hadn’t been glad to hear she wouldn’t have to bother to host Maxwell the summer after his graduation from Oxford. “You’re leaving us, aren’t you? You’re abandoning us, just like he did!” she said with furious tears in her voice.
“Mum, no. It’s just a bit of a holiday, then I’ll be back. If anything, I’ll see you more, because I’ll no longer have classes and I’ll have an easier time driving down from London on the weekends.”
A reasonable argument, but instead of saying yes to his request for money as a uni graduation gift, she’d cut their bio connection without a further word.
And now here he was relying on Dyana for everything. Yet again. Not for the first time, he cursed the man who’d provided for their family well enough but had left his mother a bitter shell of her former self.
“It’ll be better after I start with the bank,” he assured Dyana, looking over at her.
“Maxie, I don’t care. I really don’t,” she assured him, taking another sip of her fruity drink.
“I care,” he answered, staring morosely into his own drink. “Call me vintage, but I’d like to be able to look your parents in the eye when I put myself forward as their future son-in-law.”
Dyana sat up in her lounge chair and raised her sunglasses, so that he could see her stunned blue eyes. “Do you mean to tell me you’d like us to marry?”
Maxie also sat up, his face reddening as he realized the implications of his words. “No. Not yet. Not now when I don’t have any savings.”
It felt as if his face was on fire now, and it had nothing to do with the Spanis
h sun. However, Dyana pressed. “But later. You’re saying you’d want to marry me later?”
Max dipped his head, no longer able to look her in the eye. Yet somehow, he managed to mutter, “Yes, Dy. I know it’s not hashtag for people to get married so young anymore. But it’s been a year of me not wanting to be with anyone but you. The best year of my life, really. And when I get my finances together…” Here he had to force himself to look up at her. To address her like a man. “…when my credits are right, I’d like to not want anyone else for the rest of my life.”
She eyed him with that shrewd blue stare of hers. And Max cringed, wondering just how lame he must sound to someone whose parents had met on the #richkidsoflondon Facebook Watch show. But then she said, “If you’re that certain, why not ask me now?”
Max blinked, not sure he was understanding her correctly. “Excuse me?”
“Ask me now,” she commanded, imperious as someone impersonating the King of England’s departed grandmother.
Max swallowed. But he wasn’t a coward he decided. “Dyana Kundstrom. Will you marry me?” he asked in a brave rush.
However, Dyana did not answer right away. She studied him for a long time, then said, “You know when I first saw you holding forth on credit strategies at that MBA mixer, I thought to myself. There is a boy I could see myself with further down the line, when I’m thirty or so, when I’m over my bad boys' phase. But instead of waiting until I became a more sensible kind of woman, I told you to kiss me. And do you know why I did that, Maxie?”
Max shook his head. And she leaned forward to set her drink on the table between their chairs. “Because a little voice told me, 'if you want him, Dy, it has to be now.' And for reasons I’ll never be able to understand or explain for that matter, I listened to that voice. I kissed you ten years before I had planned. And do you know, Maxie, I’ve never regretted it? Not even once. So, yes, I do agree to marry you. To spend the rest of my life not wanting anyone else either. But not in two years, or whenever you think you’ll have enough credits in savings. Now. Right away. Forget this Ibiza trip. Let’s go somewhere that doesn’t require a long license wait instead and follow that voice to the very end.”
The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy Page 67